s
i Ignore It
Do NOT
“
breech designed to warn of a challenge to your safety. “Go back to bed, put in your ear plugs, and forget about the alarm,” would be a rather strange next automated response. We take seriously the signs of a threat
I
when it comes to the place that we live, just as we heed the warnings of the smoke detector or the check engine light in our cars; we have been taught that not to pay immediate attention is to take an unneces- sary risk. These innovations in protecting ourselves, like many inventions of the modern age, borrow concepts from the inner-workings of the human body, and therefore one of the greatest curiosities in recent human history is that we have not been taught to recognize the equivalent warnings that our bodies are in distress; rather, we have been taught to ignore them. The average person has over 75 trillion
total cells in his/her body. Each cell per- forms roughly 200,000 tasks every split second; an infinite number of things just happened in your body while reading the preceding ten words. Every eight minutes, every six weeks, and every four months, respectively, the make-up of our stomach linings, livers, and blood supplies are re- plenished cellularly; our bodies are living, breathing regeneration machines. When a child is born, a popular and very true state- ment, “It is a miracle!” is frequently ex- pressed, but it remains a miracle from cradle to grave. We have to learn to trust that “each patient carries his own doctor inside [and] that we are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work”¹ and we have to teach our kids to learn to trust that
ntruder alert! Intruder alert!,” the home security device blares in the middle of the night, the system triggered by a
too because, unequivocally, health de- pends on it. How the key organs that govern the
manner in which the body works is a fas- cinating topic that every child should be learning about in grade school; it is basic applied science. The central nervous sys- tem is the power supply, and it carries electrical energy to each part of the body. Intriguingly, the hub of the nerve system, the brainstem – our plug into the “source” of electrical energy and the single most vital part of the entire human body – is physically situated in the single most delicate structural area of the entire human body, right where the head and the neck meet inside a bone nicknamed the “Atlas” (the first cervical vertebra, or C1), which is actually the only bone of around 200 overall to be held in place just by muscles instead of the standard bony locks that prevent movement well beyond normal ranges.
Another peculiar trait about this
above-mentioned, particularly unique anatomical feature is that the opening within the Atlas where resides the brain- stem – the cell tower of the human body network, the nerve system's Houston
MARSHALL C. FREEMAN, MD Specializing in the diagnosis
and management of complicated
headaches. We are dedicated to helping patients treat their headaches and return to normal activities.
BOTOX • Clinical Trials
1414 Yanceyville Street • Greensboro, NC 27405 336.574.8000
www.HeadacheWellnessCenter.com MAY 2019
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